Atari Vets Hope To Re-Revolutionize Arcade Games

They might be in their 50's and 60's now - but they're still the champions of gaming. A group of former Atari programmers have combined forces to take on the modern electronic game world - and win.

The creators behind a host of Atari arcade classics are reuniting to take on mobile and social games. Their new studio, Innovative Leisure, was unveiled today through a Time Magazine feature and a THQ announcement that the publisher would be handling multiple games from the developer, starting later this year.

The creative geniuses who designed and programmed the classic arcade games that ushered in the video game era in the mid 1970's believe that the gaming world has come full circle - back to what made their classics so riveting.

There are a number of parallels between the arcade market and the current social and mobile sector of today, including a low barrier to entry for casual audiences, both in terms of the investment required and the complexity of the games themselves. "We've come full circle," Rubin told Time. "The iPad and the iPhone--they're the new arcade.

Innovative Leisure has high hopes for 2012 - with a full slate of releases aimed at the "casual gamers" that have been bitten by the "Angry Birds", "Farmville", or "Words With Friends" bug; They believe that these are the same sort of demographic they USED to program for.

Innovative Leisure has a total of 30 employees working to release seven games this year. One of the games, WWI Dogfight, is a turn-based flight combat game that features asynchronous multiplayer action with players piloting biplanes back and forth.